The demand for shipping freight has increased steadily over the years. To satisfy this demand, freight hauling (or carrier) companies have created vast fleets of mobile carrier vehicles for each of a variety of different transportation modes (e.g., ground, air, rail, or ship). The resulting increase in the scale of operations, as well as a general increase in the competition in the freight hauling industry, has driven the need for increased efficiency in handling high volumes of parcels and providing a large number of carrier services.
Many different systems and methods for improving efficiencies in the freight hauling industry have been proposed. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,880,958 has proposed a system and method for assigning tractor vehicles to freight loads within a freight transportation system. The system includes a satellite navigation subsystem that provides vehicle and load position data from which the locations of each tractor vehicle and freight load may be determined. A set deadhead distances that are required to be traversed by tractor vehicles unencumbered with freight loads while en route to load pick-up locations also may be determined from the position data. The system also determines multiple potential pick-up times at which the freight loads may become available for engagement by tractor vehicles at selected pick-up locations. Each unencumbered tractor vehicle then may be matched efficiently with an available freight load in accordance with matching criteria that may be based upon, for example, the compiled sets of deadhead distances and potential pick-up times. In addition, the satellite position data may be used to improve fleet utilization by reassigning tractor vehicles currently encumbered with freight loads through calculation of expected time of availability subsequent to load delivery.
The ability of a mobile carrier vehicle to respond to a shipper's needs at any given time depends directly on the carrier vehicle's current capacity, which is the space that is currently available in the mobile carrier vehicle, and the current location of the mobile carrier vehicle. More often than not, carrier vehicles have “excess capacity” (i.e., the maximum available space in the carrier vehicle is not fully utilized). Excess capacity represents revenue or opportunity lost to the carrier.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,835,716 has proposed a method for brokering carrier capacity. In accordance with this method, carrier capacity is entered into a transportation database in the form of a list of parameters, which may include: amount of space available; destination; dates and times; rates; and mode of transport (e.g., air, ground, ship, rail, or mixed modal). Requests for available capacity also are entered into the transportation database in the form of a list of parameters that define a requested shipment route. Such parameters may include: amount of space required; destination; dates and times; rates; and mode of transport. A data processing system identifies matches between the request for available capacity and the capacity that has been entered into the transportation database. The system operator making the request for carrier capacity may display the request made and the matching capacity entries that have been identified by the data processing system. The system operator may select an appropriate matched entry from among those displayed. The selection then must be confirmed. Upon confirmation, the selected matched entry is saved to a transaction database and assigned a transaction code. The assignment of a transaction code may be the initiating step in preparing a bill for services or generating a transaction report.
In another effort to improve efficiencies in the freight hauling industry, U.S. Pat. No. 6,035,289 has proposed a web-based trading system that receives, by electronic media, one or more asks from each of a plurality of carrier entities, and one or more bids from each of a plurality of shipping entities. Each of the asks and bids are stored as a record in a general purpose programmable digital computer. Each ask record includes data representing an available cargo capacity, an origin of shipment, an offered departure time window, an offered shipment destination, an offered destination arrival time window, and an ask price. Similarly, each bid record includes data representing a certain volume or weight of goods that need to be transported, a required shipping origin, a required shipping destination, a required departure time window, a required arrival time window, and a bid price. The trading system then performs a double auction bid-ask matching process that iteratively matches the bids to the asks to obtain a maximum number of matches based upon a plurality of matching constraints. The matching constraints are based upon the respective shipping origins and shipping destinations, time windows, available cargo capacities, required volume or weight of goods, and ask and bid prices contained in the bid and ask records.